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Foreword by Cindy Sheehan

After years of profound involvement in the US antiwar movement, I can now sniff out partisan political frauds, and the author of this memoir, Jon Gold, is not one of them.

A partisan political fraud latches on to an issue or cause or cause celebré until that thing or person is not popular anymore, then he/she bails out at the first opportunity.

A person who really cares about humanity realizes that the cesspool of partisanship creates and/or fosters the problems for pure political gain. Jon Gold is one of these people.

When people were killed on 9/11, Jon Gold was at first a Fox News-aholic who wanted revenge for those killings―but only because he cared about the people who were killed and their families. Now, through self-education and mentors, whom he generously acknowledges throughout this book―he realized that we were all lied to on 9/11, and he has worked diligently to highlight the truth because he still cares about the people who were killed on that day, their families, and the people who are still being killed because of our country’s reaction to the attack.

My oldest child, Casey, was just one of those victims of the insane response to the attacks on 9/11 and I became famous and infamous because of my protests against the wars and the Bush regime―well, after I became notorious, I began to become literally bombarded by people and their causes because they believed that I had a platform, megaphone, or soapbox to highlight these causes.

Some of those causes were absurd―from the man who was convinced that Stephen King killed John Lennon, and if I would only help him expose that, world peace would ensue (he actually jumped on the hood of my car in Berkeley once) to the man who wanted me to come to Arizona to be a character witness for his friend who was accused of killing a cow. I kid you not!

The most prevalent of these people who bombarded me, though, were the 9/11 “Truthers.” I was harassed all over the world by them and I swear if one more person asked me if I saw Loose Change I was going to forget my pacifism and punch him (it was always a him) in the face. The sad thing about this harassment was that I never believed the so-called official story of 9/11 and would have tended to be an ally to these people, but they were so rude and pushy. And, I didn’t feel that I had the time or the inclination to wade through the stacks of information that they tried to force on me―True Confession time, I left a lot of that material in cabs or garbage cans.

I was sincerely beginning to loathe 9/11 “Truthers” with a passion I reserved for the U.S. Empire. The only thing that saved them from my total loathing was the fact that I realized that they were usually well-meaning and had good intentions, but I was, and still am, turned off by the “hologram,” “laser-beam,” “Israel was totally responsible” crowd that really make the movement seem insane.

I don’t remember when Jon Gold first started messaging me at the MySpace thing, but I remember he began by apologizing for the people in the movement who harassed me mercilessly―which got my attention. Here was a “Truther” (Jon hates that label) that wasn’t attacking me for my “cowardice” in not publicly saying that 9/11 was an “inside job.” Well, of course it was, but I (and neither does anybody else, no matter how sure they seem) know how far inside it went.

Jon Gold never demanded that I watch any movies, (although he helped a very good one get financing), read any books, or publicly announce anything using my platform. Gradually, my anger at the truth movement began to fade and I was able to do things like publicly support NYCCAN and its push for a ballot measure to have a new investigation of 9/11―and I have become friends with others in the movement and, through Jon, met Bob McIlvaine, whose son, Bobby, was killed on 9/11, and has become another tireless activist for justice.

Since our MySpace beginnings, Jon and I have become close friends. We have organized events in DC as members of Peace of the Action (POTA) and even were arrested together in front of the White House and we very romantically shared the first ever “stay away order” from said White House with about four other activists and went on trial for that arrest and were both exonerated.

9/11 truth is still not my “thing,” but because of Jon Gold, I am open to it and don’t have a knee-jerk reaction (which means I used to want to knee any Truther that approached me in the male parts―kidding―I do that sometimes) to anyone in the movement.

Jon is kind of young to be writing a memoir, so this is just Part One of a long and, we all hope, productive career of activism and a life filled with love, justice and peace.

Cindy Sheehan
Vacaville, Ca
February 10, 2012

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When OWS first started, I didn’t pay as much attention to it as I do now. It wasn’t until the confrontation on the Brooklyn Bridge that I finally started to really look at what they’re doing. My interpretation of why they are doing what they’re doing is as follows. In a nutshell, they are tired of the bought and paid for politicians making decisions that do not benefit the people, and instead, benefit the corporations.

There might be more to it, but to me, that is it. After seeing how Obama is Bush’s third term and then some, people finally “woke up.”

Finally. As an advocate for 9/11 Justice for the last 9+ years, I have seen spurts of people protest this and that, but for the most part, people have acted as though they just didn’t care. Call it apathy, ignorance, whatever. It seemed like they just didn’t care. For years, people in the 9/11 Truth Movement, and the anti-war movement used to say that people will finally wake up when they start to lose their homes, when they start to lose their jobs, their TVs, their pensions, their cars, etc… and so on. From the majority of signs I see, it seems that we were right. Ok. Whatever works.

I would like to address those signs. Jobs, health care, money out of politics, holding bankers accountable, etc… are all legitimate issues. However, so is the killing and dying we are responsible for around the world. There must be a strong anti-war message (which includes 9/11 Justice) included in the Occupy movements. It is the moral thing to do. It must not be just about material wealth and needs. Unless, of course, you want to be seen as greedy people who want a slice of the pie.

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of going to Occupy Wall Street with my 9/11 sign. Between 500-1000 people took my picture or gave me a “thumbs up.” About 5 people wanted their picture taken with my sign. It was nice to know that people still care.

It has been absolutely fascinating for me to watch the media’s response to OWS. I have seen every “trick of the trade” used against OWS that I have seen used against the 9/11 Truth Movement. It was like watching a re-run. On 10/13/2011, the LATimes ran an article that said, “how do you know when a protest movement is starting to scare the pants off the establishment? One clue is when the protesters are casually dismissed as hippies or rabble, or their principles redefined as class envy or as (that all-purpose insult) “un-American.” If that is the case, then the “establishment” must be SCARED SHITLESS of what advocates for 9/11 Justice have to say. Just look at the different things the media has said over the years. It is because of the media’s campaign that no one wants to associate with anyone that questions the official account of 9/11.

That is what the media seems to be doing now. In fact, I’m seeing the “anti-semitism” card being played a lot now. The 9/11 Truth Movement can relate. They will look for the 5, 10, even 20 people (out of millions) ignorantly saying things about Zionism or Israel, and they will paint EVERYONE with the same brush.

There are also efforts by MoveOn.org, and unions to “co-opt” OWS. The 9/11 Truth Movement was “co-opted” by people in the “Conspiracy Theory Industry,” so again, we can relate. Do not let that happen OWS. The Democrats and the Republicans are two sides of the same exact coin. Also, Fox News can be horrid, but so can MSNBC, CNN, and the rest of the corporate media.

I fully support the efforts of OWS. Last week, I brought $120 worth of supplies to “Occupy Philly.”

Here is what I’m hoping happens. I hope the end result of their effort brings us a system that works for the people, and not the corporations (in Government, media, courts, etc…). I hope the end result of their efforts gives us a system that holds people accountable for their crimes, no matter HOW powerful or rich a person may be. I hope the end result of their effort puts an end to the murder we are taking part in around the world.

Basically, I’m hoping for a Revolution.

So stand your ground OWS, and the rest of the Occupy Movements. Now is the time.

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What was the first discrepancy, or discrepancies, that moved you to begin researching the hidden history of 9/11, and how long have you been involved with it ever since?

The first thing that caught my attention was the fact that Dick Cheney and George Bush went to Tom Daschle’s office, and asked him to “limit the scope” of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11. At the time I thought, “why would the President and Vice President, of all people, not want to know exactly how and why this happened, so as to make sure it could never happen again?” After 9/11, we were told repeatedly that there were no warnings, that no one had any idea that anything like that could happen. Then in May 2002, news of the August 6th, 2001 PDB entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike In US” was reported on. That was a “warning.” Once I saw that we were being lied to, I was “off to the races.”

If there were just three facts that discredit the official theory that you feel people must know, what would be those facts?

There were a multitude of warnings, and a lot more known about the hijackers by our Government, prior to 9/11, than the public has been led to believe. The investigations we got into 9/11, in my view, were compromised and corrupt. Especially the 9/11 Commission, which was led by Philip Zelikow. We were told that the source of the funding was “ultimately of little practical significance.” There are indications that some of the money was connected to Prince Bandar’s [of Saudi Arabia] wife. That’s significant. There are indications that some of the money came from Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh at the behest of Lt. General Mahmood Ahmed of the Pakistani ISI. That is significant.

What have been some of the biggest or most intriguing revelations to surface within the past couple of years?

That the 9/11 Commission considered referring NORAD to the Department of Justice for a criminal investigation because of the lies they told to the 9/11 Commission. That 9/11 Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds said Osama Bin Laden had “intimate relations” with the U.S. up until 9/11. The multitude of whistleblowers that were ignored and censored by the 9/11 Commission. There were “Government Minders” that intimidated witnesses before the 9/11 Commission, and in some cases, answered questions for witnesses. That a complete outline of the final report of the 9/11 Commission was written by Ernest May and Philip Zelikow before the 9/11 Commission’s investigation even began. That Philip Zelikow may have been taking direction from Karl Rove. That’s really off the top of my head, but there is so much more.

We’ve both talked about our respect for the film 9/11: Press for Truth. Can you talk about why that film is such an important document about the hidden history of 9/11? Would you recommend it as an introduction to people just starting to question the official theory?

When Kyle Hence told me he was working on the film, I was extremely excited. It was going to tell the story of my heroes, the Jersey Girls, and it was going to be based on the work of someone that greatly influenced me, Paul Thompson. Nothing could be better in my opinion. When Kyle told me he needed money to finish the film, within a few minutes after he told me, I asked my father to loan me the money so they could finish the film. I didn’t hesitate for a second because I knew this was going to be an important documentary. The film is clearly one of the most important documentaries of our generation. It tells the story of the cover-up from the perspective of those who lost the most that day. It completely obliterates the legitimacy of the 9/11 Commission in the first 30 minutes. It shows the basic inconsistencies in the “official account.” I have always thought this documentary was the best tool for activists. In my opinion, 9/11 activists should show this film to people before anything else if they want to be taken seriously.

Will you talk about why (if you agree with this assertion, of course) the movement to question the official theory and uncover the truth hasn’t gained more traction in America, and why it seems to have made more headway in other parts of the world?

Well, the “9/11 Truth Movement” did gain some momentum in 2005-2006. But the “media” decided to focus on the fringiest of the fringe. As a result, we weren’t taken seriously. The “media” overall, has done its best over the years to paint us as conspiracy theorists, as crazy, as unpatriotic, as terrorist sympathizers, as terrorists, as holocaust denying murderers, etc… and so on. No one wants to associate with us. The media’s campaign to tarnish anyone that questions the official account of 9/11 has been extremely successful. People are dying in the Middle East, so it would make sense for people in the Middle East to question the official account of 9/11. As far as parts of the world outside the United States that question the official account, that aren’t directly affected by America’s occupations… they probably have better media than the U.S.

We now know from various news reports that the U.S. security state has turned its attention inward to spy on American activists as well as potential foreign enemies living in the country. Homeland Security was seen monitoring a peaceful BART protest in San Francisco the other night, and they’re also likely monitoring organizers and participants involved with US Day of Rage’s upcoming occupation of Wall Street, based on a bulletin released recently. Can you talk about how 9/11 has eroded the freedoms America used to cherish, and do you think we’ve allowed the 9/11 tragedy to get the best of us? Is there hope of beating the security state and regaining our civil liberties?

Expose the 9/11 Cover-Up, and I believe that everything that happened as a result of that day, will stop, or be reversed. The occupations will end, and the majority of legislation written that takes away our civil liberties will be reversed. Peace of the Action, the group Cindy Sheehan founded that I am apart of, was spied on by the Institute Of Terrorism Research And Response. I was spied on before I committed civil disobedience at the White House for 9/11 Justice. I assume I was spied on because when I got there, a cop asked me “are you Jon Gold? Are you still planning on chaining yourself to the White House fence?” There are many examples of liberties lost since 9/11. Look at the TSA, look at the wiretapping of phones, look at free speech zones, etc… Again, expose the damn 9/11 Cover-Up.

Would you care to offer any sort of narrative regarding what you think happened on 9/11, based on the extensive research you’ve conducted over all these years?

I don’t know what happened on 9/11, or who was ultimately responsible. That’s the problem. I have an idea, but I don’t know. Everyone has theories about what happened that day. Some are ridiculous and far-fetched, and others aren’t. However, without a real criminal investigation, we just don’t know. I believe 9/11 was a crime as opposed to an act of war, and as with every crime, there are suspects for that crime. In my opinion, elements within our Government and others have MORE THAN EARNED the title of suspect for the crime of 9/11.

How do you suggest people get involved in the struggle for 9/11 accountability?

By telling the next person until we have a majority of people. We can’t do shit with the system we have.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Since today is 9/11, I’d just like to say that I hope the families that lost someone that day have the easiest day possible. I hope the responders that were down there are honored, and that the James Zadroga 9/11 Health & Compensation Act is made to include cancer for the coverage it gives.

Jon Gold (@911JusticeNow) is a prolific contributor to sites such as 9/11 Truth News, History Commons, Peace of the Action, Secrecy Kills and helped fund the film 9/11: Press for Truth.

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Somebody posts a photo on a message board with a title like “Image of the Pentagon Impact area on 9/11. How the hell can anyone with a brain think this was caused by a Boeing 757?” I click. It’s a low-resolution ground-level shot of the smoking Pentagon. Using Photoshop, or MS Paint maybe, somebody has drawn a pair of circles — one around some flames on the left and another around a damaged piece of wall on the right. I go to the comments.

Ah, yes, there it is: the single missile theory.

The SMT is pretty simple: What if it wasn’t Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon, but a cruise missile (or, as per the most extreme iterations, a missile cloaked in a hologram to make it look like a plane)? No matter how wildly it swerves from most eyewitness accounts, not to mention the official account described in the 9/11 Commission Report, the SMT has likely persisted because (A) that hole in the wall looks kinda small and (B) unlike the attacks on the World Trade Center, no clear footage of the attack on the Pentagon has been released.

All we have is five frames from a parking lot security camera that seem to show the plane crossing the Pentagon lawn and exploding on the western wall. Other footage, from traffic cams and such, was supposedly confiscated by federal investigators soon after the attack and has not yet seen the light of day.

The SMT really bugs me. By the time the Pentagon was attacked, the perpetrators had already proven they could hijack planes and fly them into buildings. Why would they need a missile an hour later? I wrote something to that effect on the message board. Most people said they didn’t know. One person said this:

“I don’t think there were any planes. There is a video out there that compiles footage from all news broadcasts around the planet and surmises they were all off of one feed. Seriously, if there is no plane at the Pentagon or the field, then why would there be one at the WTC? It’s too easy, the people that were called in as ‘witnesses’ all worked for the networks and therefore are inherently biased based on the BS we are being fed.”

That’s one of the nagging little problems with the 9/11 Truth Movement. Just when you think you’ve found a starting point to discuss the issues, the rabbit hole goes even deeper. The answer is often a larger conspiracy.

The bigger problem with the 9/11 Truth Movement is that there’s no such thing as a unified, coherent 9/11 Truth Movement.

On Jan. 31, 2011, Jon Gold drove from his home in Plymouth Meeting to Washington, D.C., and handcuffed himself to the White House fence. He had a big, professionally made sign that read, “We were LIED to about 9/11.” Even though he’d hyped the stunt on his website for a month beforehand, his friend with a video camera was the only other activist to show up and support him. Police, park police and maybe even Secret Service did stop by at various times. He was eventually freed with bolt-cutters and arrested.

Gold is the kind of guy journalists like to call “a man without a country.” He believes his actual country has covered up the true nature of its biggest tragedy. And the people you’d think would be his people, the truthers, he wants nothing to do with.

One of the 260-plus videos Gold has uploaded onto his YouTube channel illustrates his feelings about most of his “fellow” activists. Circus music. A title card that says, “The following crap hurts the cause of 9/11 Justice.” Then a laundry list of the stuff that often gets his peers labeled as crackpots: missiles, holograms, CGI, mini-nukes, laser beams from space, chemtrails (more on those later), man-made earthquakes, UFOs, the Illuminati, the Jews, plane-swaps, hijackers who didn’t die, and about a dozen other things.

“It’s sad. There are people on the fringe, the authors, who constantly write books, who promote crappy information, and people who mean well pick up on this and they start pushing it.” This is Gold, when he and I meet up for coffee near South Street. “There was a time back in 2006 when we were very, I don’t know if you would say powerful, but we had a lot of members and the media started to focus on us. But who did they focus on? They focused on people like Kevin Barrett, who [says] Israel’s responsible for everything, you know? They focused on Webster Tarpley [a promoter of the “9/11 was an inside job” idea], who’s just a charlatan. They focused on the fringe.”

Gold laughs when I ask whether he ever finds himself arguing with that fringe.

“All the time. I call them out as often as possible because I want there to be clear evidence that I am not associated with those people.”

After Sept. 11, Gold got swept up in the “patriotic binge” — waving the flag, supporting the war. Some of that started to erode as he watched the news. He remembers CNN reporting Jan. 29, 2002, that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney each separately asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to limit the scope of the post-9/11 investigation. Says Gold: “And I thought, why would the vice president and the president, of all people, not want to know exactly how and why this happened so as to make sure it could never happen again?”

Then there was the infamous Aug. 6, 2001, President’s Daily Brief, eventually made public, titled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” “After that came out and I saw that we were being lied to, and then I saw how they were using the 9/11 attacks, I just — I was furious, and it was off to the races.”

He’s been at it for nearly a decade. “I’m very old-school 9/11 Truth, which means I support the families and I support the responders,” he says. That’s something you don’t hear in most truther rhetoric: mentions of the 2,977 who died, and their families, and the first responders, and their quest for health care. Gold helped fund the 2006 documentary 9/11: Press for Truth, in which the families of victims, like the Jersey Girls, express their frustration in getting answers from the government about who knew what ahead of time, which warnings we ignored, and why more wasn’t done that day. Gold also tends to cite mainstream sources, like FBI documents and news reports, on his website and at public appearances. He espouses no theory.

“I know more about 9/11 than probably most people on the planet, and I don’t know what happened that day, I don’t know who was ultimately responsible. But I look at 9/11 as a crime as opposed to an act of war, and as with every crime, there are suspects for that crime, and along with Osama bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 19 hijackers, elements within our government and other governments had more than earned the title of suspect for the crime. More than earned.”

I’m on the second floor of an unmarked building in Northern Liberties watching a cartoon about the evils of the Federal Reserve Bank. There are about 20 of us, maybe fewer, sitting on couches. The plot revolves around a cool dude telling his clueless friend about how the Fed — depicted as a monstrous, black tentacled beast — is a privately owned and utterly unregulated money-sucker. The movie’s kinda funny and mostly pretty straightforward. There’s a lot of Google-able stuff about the gold standard. But it does take a dubious detour to explain how JFK got assassinated not long after announcing his intentions to end the Fed. During the quieter parts, we can hear the jubilant outbursts of a yoga class through the walls.

Not 9/11-related, as far as I know. Why am I here? Well, this is a public meeting by a group currently called Truth, Freedom, Prosperity, but they used to call themselves Philly 9/11 Truth, and they still list that as one of their concerns, along with financial and economic freedom, alternative energy technologies, “legalization of nature,” etc.

After the movie, organizer Michael Salvi, a friendly guy in a mock-Phillies T-shirt (“Liberty” in the team’s script on the front, “Ron Paul” on the back), leads an open forum discussion. A couple people discredit the JFK thing, there’s talk about what the average person can do about the Fed, somebody asks if he should buy gold for “when the whole thing comes crashing down.”

Then a guy in the front row tilts the discussion to numerology, the occult and, I think, the Illuminati. He points out, for reasons I don’t pick up on, that Oswald, Osama and Oslo all begin with the same two letters. He adds 9 and 1 and 1 and comes up with 11, an important number in occult circles. People let him speak, but the conversation quickly returns to financial talk. Jon Gold would not enjoy a meeting like this.

Salvi says he shows films that will stimulate conversation, and he’s not endorsing their messages 100 percent. As for 9/11, it’s still something he and the group are concerned with, but it’s on the backburner to the economy discussions.

“Some of the theories are really sexy. George Bush had full knowledge. This person was told to do this. This country was involved. It’s all very exciting and enticing, but I just don’t know,” he says. “The one thing that I can get behind is that aliens with missiles … ” He’s joking.

The bottom line for him is that the official story sounds fishy. “I certainly don’t believe the stories that 19 guys were able to get four planes with box cutters and took it over with these red bandannas on and crashed the planes into these buildings and everything but their passports burned up. Including the black box.”

In the lobby outside the screening room, I score a DVD on legalizing marijuana and some fliers: Better Living Through Alchemy, How Mind Control Works, The War on Consciousness, and a bunch about ending the Fed. Somehow I fail to pick up the paper on Satanism.

Knowing that people in the Truth movement are always getting dismissed as kooks, I ask Salvi about the fliers.

“It just kinda comes with the territory,” he says. He used to get nervous about bringing together such disparate opinions on touchy subjects, but he says things have never gotten too heated. The fliers are part of the group’s general air of open-mindedness.

“We have 700 members in our group. I’m less worried about offending the mass public by some perception. I’m more worried about offending the person who shows up at every meeting that we throw, at every event that we do, who’s been super supportive. And for me to turn around — and I may not know about what they do, and they’re super passionate — for me to just to tell them they can’t do it, it’s the exact opposite of freedom.”

Jon Gold and I are Facebook friends now, which means I’m only one degree of separation from well-known anti-war/anti-Bush activist Cindy Sheehan. She and Gold are real-life friends. They got arrested together at a protest in March of last year.

Gold’s always filling his Facebook wall with videos of congressional hearings, public statements, news reports, things like that. He posts a 2004 clip of Bush in the Rose Garden addressing the press after meeting with the 9/11 Commission. The point is to remind you that Bush and Cheney agreed to only meet with the commission together, in private, and not under oath.

“I’m glad I took the time,” Bush is shown saying. “This is an important commission, and it’s important that they ask the questions they ask so that they can help make recommendations necessary to better protect our homeland. It was — I enjoyed it.” Yes, Bush actually said he enjoyed it. It had been expected that the president would be grilled a little on why he didn’t react right away when the nation was under attack, and why no fighter jets were scrambled in time to intercept hijacked planes. The president, however, characterized the meeting as a “cordial conversation.”

Gold points me to the link and asks what I think of it. I tell him it reminded me how frustrating it was living in the Bush era. The supposed leader of the free world came off daily like a bumbling fool who thinks he’s slick. Gold doesn’t exactly see it that way.

“People often say incompetence, but these individuals weren’t incompetent. They came in office, they wanted to go to war. They did go to war. They wanted to make billions for their corporate friends, they did that. They wanted to expand executive power, they did that. They committed so many crimes during their eight years [in] office and remained Teflon-coated throughout,” says Gold. “There was no accountability at all.”

The 9/11 Commission Report was supposed to do that, but several things remain problematic, including its lack of reference to World Trade Center 7 (the third skyscraper to collapse that day) and apparent conflicts of interests on the board (including Bush’s national security strategist Philip Zelikow). That’s why so many people say they want a new investigation into 9/11. But does Gold think a fair shake is possible the next time around?

“It has to be away from the government. There has to be subpoena power, people have to be put under oath, which George Bush and Dick Cheney refused to do. I don’t know, maybe an international body of some kind. It can’t take place in D.C.”

A few weeks ago, Gold had told me to stay tuned, that on Aug. 11, something “huge” was going to happen. That gave me pause. Gold’s a gentle-giant type, built like a Mack truck but soft-spoken and calm. I briefly imagined him doing something dangerous, then dismissed it. He had been led from the White House fence to the police car like a diner whose table was ready.

The date came and I didn’t see anything on CNN, or MSNBC, or anywhere, but I didn’t really know what I was looking for, either.

Gold finally sends me a link to the Atlantic‘s blog:

“Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism czar, believes that former CIA director George Tenet and other top aides hid intelligence that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks.”

Eventually I see the story a few other places, but it doesn’t earn a “breaking news” banner or make a ripple in the general consciousness.

“Does this happen a lot? Something that seems pretty huge and newsworthy doesn’t get coverage in the media?” I ask him.

“Happens too often,” he says. “The media loves to focus on the fringe, forget the family members asking questions, and ignore everything except the theories.”

That’s why there’s really no such thing as a solitary, unified 9/11 Truth Movement. Just a fractured bunch of people with wild theories on one side, a quest for answers on the other side, and a thousand points in between. “Even the [phrase] 9/11 Truth is, like, toxic,” says Gold. “I refer to myself now as an advocate for 9/11 justice as opposed to a 9/11 truther.”

Not sure what reverse numerology SEPTA was using when it decided to rename its regional rail lines, but I eventually find my way to a small town on the Main Line one rainy night, for a screening by a group that meets regularly to watch films about 9/11. On the way, I read Popular Mechanics ‘ 2005 article “Debunking the 9/11 Myths,” which I found online. Basically, the writers line up the dubious claims from conspiracy sites (mostly related to physics and engineering) and counter them with data and interviews. On the Pentagon’s tiny plane hole: “A crashing jet doesn’t punch a cartoon-like outline of itself into a reinforced concrete building.” It’s pretty convincing stuff.

The counterpoint is a group called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, whose site is loaded with documents about thermite, thermate, nano-thermite — chemicals that can melt steel and which they say were found at Ground Zero. That’s what I’m hoping to see at this screening: the nitty-gritty conspiracy science, diagrams of WTC7, evidence of explosives, that sort of thing.

Sadly, for me, this group has many interests. The night I’m there, the feature is What in the World Are They Spraying?, a documentary about chemtrails. Not 9/11-related. See those planes painting neat-looking stripes of clouds in the sky? Those are poisonous chemtrails, supposedly, created to either reduce the population or kill off all crops that don’t use Monsanto-patented seeds.

In the lobby after the movie, I pick up a short stack of DVDs (WTC Twin Towers: Explosive Evidence, 9/11 Blueprint for Truth, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, Terrorstorm, Nine Years of War Based on a Lie and more), a pile of reading material and a slap bracelet made for a bygone rally.

I meet up with some members of the group at a nearby restaurant. I tell them I’m a reporter, and they’re cool with it, but they balk at being recorded. They don’t even want me naming the restaurant in this article, even though it’s mentioned online, because, as one woman says, “Homeland Security is right down the road.” She gestures over her shoulder with her thumb. I look. I really don’t know the area.

So I scribble feverishly in my notebook as the conversation goes from chemtrails to the “Patriot Slavery Act” to the New World Order, mostly led by the charming lady with a book by her side called How Can I Share My Faith Without an Argument? She has no doubt 9/11 was “an inside job,” and points to the “teeny tiny” hole in the Pentagon and laughs at the idea that a passenger jet like Flight 77 could’ve caused it. I consider whipping out the Popular Mechanics article, but the conversation moves on to MK Ultra mind control and, eventually, how the state of Pennsylvania is exploding old ammunition in the Ramapo fault line in an effort to trigger a major earthquake. She read about it on online. She’s also a two-time Bush voter who now regrets it, and a birther.

It’s hard to tell how much everybody else at the table is on board with what she’s saying. The guy directly across from me is interested in End the Fed-type stuff, so we talk about that for a while. He recommends I check out conspiracy radio host Alex Jones. I tell him about a YouTube video that compiles a couple years’ worth of Jones’ various predictions — nuclear disasters, wars, assassinations — and none of them seem to come true. The guy says Jones is basically showing his listeners the cards that might be played by those in power.

Finally I catch the ear of a man we’ll call Mr. X, who may or may not be running the group. He’s sort of a truther guru. He points out how the FBI never actually charged Bin Laden with 9/11-related crimes. He talks about MI5 and MI6 and peer-reviewed papers by architects regarding the rate at which buildings fall during demolition. “Everything I’ve told you is the truth, but that doesn’t make it the truth,” he says. Also: “Authority isn’t truth. Truth is authority. See? Turned it around.”

Mr. X advises me not to believe anything I hear unless I do research, even if he’s the one saying it. “I could be lying to you,” he says, enough times to make me suspicious. “Everywhere around you is lies, Patrick. All around you.”

Jon Gold would probably call these people “the fringe.” They would probably say he’s blind to the big picture, or pretending to be, so as not to seem fringey. There would be no winner in an argument between the two sides. Is there room in any one political movement for such disparate factions?

My notebook full of sites to visit and books to look up, my head buzzing with self-perpetuating theories and unconfirmable factoids, I say goodbye and head out to the train station.

It’s suddenly nice out. No rain. Not a chemtrail in the sky. And that rumble underfoot isn’t a man-made earthquake, it’s my train.

The post The Truth About Truthers appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

On Monday, August 15, 9/11 Truth News contributor Jon Gold received a message from facebook informing him that his ability to post content to any page other than his own had been disabled. When attempting to add supplemental information to Naomi Wolf’s posting of Jason Leopold’s Richard Clarke article, Gold was informed by a pop up message:

Thinking this was perhaps an error, Gold logged out and then back into facebook.

When he again tried to post a comment, he received another warning.

Jon Gold wasn’t alone in having his posting privileges disabled.

The Addicting Info blog reported:

On Sun. Aug. 14, liberal page administrators and bloggers in my network started spreading the word that they had been blocked from posting ANY content on ANY other wall for 15 days. No prior warning was given.

The offenders are charged with posting links to news/opinion articles – such as this liberal’s guide to Republican talking points – a small number of times to LIKE-MINDED pages with which they regularly interact. (Some reported making posts to as few as 4 other pages before being suspended – for 15 days – with no warning!) I’ve also been alerted that Facebook has revoked some administrator’s posting privileges for sharing links to their liberal Facebook page on the walls of other liberal pages.

Ray Nowosielski, director of the film 9/11 Press For Truth and owner of the site secrecykills.com, reported receiving this message from a friend: “I’ve been trying to post the link for your page “Secrecy Kills” on some 9/11 related pages, and Facebook just blocked me,” adding that he was warned with the same messages as those received by others.

Jon Gold: “I haven’t changed my posting practices.  Sure, I post a lot of information, but I’m never told not to by anyone whose wall I’ve posted on. I’d also like to point out that George Tenet lied to the 9/11 Commission.”

The post 9/11 Truth News Included in Facebook's Political Censorship appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

The post Jon Gold Interviews Scott Ford at Ground Zero appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Eventually, Kevin signed up on my site, and started posting his information there. In September 2007, I started work on something I called the Who Is? Archives that was based on the material of the timeline. Kevin was kind enough to write several of the introductions for people mentioned.

The following is a written interview with Kevin Fenton, answering questions that I asked him. Thank you Kevin for taking the time, and I hope everyone buys your book, Disconnecting The Dots: How 9/11 Was Allowed To Happen. The information in it is essential to understanding the 9/11 attacks, and gives several examples of people that should have been held accountable, but weren’t.

What prompted you to get involved with the cause of 9/11 Justice?


Several years ago, I read The New Pearl Harbor by David Ray Griffin after learning of it on the web and thinking it might be interesting. After reading, I felt some of it held up fairly well, and some of his arguments did not hold up so well. I started to read things about 9/11 on the net and to delve more deeply into some of the issues.


Who are some of your influences as far as your work goes?


My biggest influence is undoubtedly Paul Thompson, who was responsible for a lot of the material at the 9/11 Timeline, which is now hosted by historycommons.org (previously cooperativeresearch.org). Paul seemed to think that there was something wrong with what you might call the “official” account of 9/11, but never seemed to be sure exactly what had really happened and he encouraged research based primarily on MSM articles and government documents.


How did you become involved with www.historycommons.org, and updating the famous “Complete 9/11 Timeline?”


I met Paul at a discussion forum on the net. He invited me to help out a couple of times and I accepted, going over the various hijackers initially, but then moving on to other topics and also other timelines hosted by historycommons.org.


Without being specific about where, what kind of work do you do?


You mean “real” work? I’m a translator. I live in the Czech Republic.


The information in your book focuses on Alec Station, the Yemen Hub, the CIA, the FBI, individuals like Tom Wilshire, Harry Samit, and others. Why did you first become interested in this aspect of 9/11, and how did you decide that this would be your focus for a book?


It was in 2006. The Yemen hub had been mentioned cryptically in a couple of passages in the 9/11 Commission Report and the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry report, but more information emerged after the warrantless wiretapping story was run by the New York Times. Specifically, President Bush mentioned the calls in his response and then they were the subject of an LA Times rebuttal-type piece by Josh Meyer. A few months later, an unredacted version of the unclassified version of the Justice Department inspector general’s report was published after the Moussaoui trial ended and Lawrence Wright published the Looming Tower, which gave a lot of details about the CIA aspect of the story.

If there was one moment that made me think “This can’t be right,” then it was when I started breaking down the Justice Department inspector general’s report for 9/11 Timeline entries. I had the report as a .pdf file and I searched for “John,” Wilshire’s alias. Although I had already read the report a couple of times, this was the first time I noticed that “John” was involved in both the withholding of information from the FBI in January 2000 and the summer of 2001. Previously, I had thought that a variety of officials had failed to pass information, but I now realized this assumption was wrong and that there was a central character.

I was working on this throughout 2006 and the first part of 2007. I hoped somebody who was an established writer would come along and take up the topic and give it a fair treatment. A guy named Bob Schopmeyer wrote a book that goes over the same ground as I do, but it had a different style and also contained a lot of information that was not relevant to what I thought needed to be said. After waiting a while, I realized nobody else was out there and I had to do it myself. The second draft, which was fairly similar to the finished version, was completed around January 2009. I still hope a more established writer will come along, find more information and write an improved version of Disconnecting.


Do you think it is more or less likely that individuals like Tom Wilshire, Dave Frasca, and others were acting on their own or under the direction of others?


There is a group of individuals that the book deals with where I was unable to come to a firm conclusion as to whether they knew they were doing wrong when they performed poorly, and Frasca is a member of that group. Maybe he was just a bureaucratic asshole who was not too hot in the competence stakes. Then again, maybe he knew he was doing wrong.

Wilshire is a different case. The number of times he withheld information from the Bureau and a number of other factors show clearly that he knew he was doing something he should not have been. However, Wilshire was deputy chief of a unit with a couple of dozen officers, so, in my opinion, he was too junior to orchestrate the whole thing. He reported to a manager named Richard Blee, son of Cold War hero David Blee.

One of the questions I address in the book is whether Blee’s bosses, CIA Counterterrorist Center chief Cofer Black and CIA Director George Tenet, knew what Blee was doing at the time. The way it looks to me, based on the evidence we have now, is that Blee acted without Black and Tenet’s knowledge. For example, on two occasions in January 2000 Blee gave Black incorrect briefings about the whereabouts of alleged Flight 77 hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi and, given the amount of cable traffic into and out of Alec Station, it is hard to believe that Blee did not know what was really going on. Also, the CIA station in Malaysia made some small-to-medium-sized mistakes in January 2000, but on three occasions somebody there went above and beyond the call of duty to try and get something done. For example, the station chief there showed the photos taken at the summit to an FBI agent. If the CIA Director was on board with the plot to keep the FBI out of the loop, why was the CIA station in Malaysia not also on board? Obviously, none of this is to deny that Black and Tenet must have figured out a good portion of what Blee did after the attacks and then covered up for him.


Are there other areas of 9/11 that interest you? Things like the air response, intelligence connections to “Al-Qaeda,” foreign support for the hijackers, etc…?


I’m pretty much interested in all of it to a degree. However, I’m not a technical type and therefore focus on non-technical aspects. Obviously, some aspects of 9/11 skepticism are more credible than others.


What are your feelings about Philip Zelikow, the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission?


After the second draft of the book was finished, the National Archives made available a portion of the commission’s files. An associate, Erik Larson, went to the Archives and started to upload the commission documents to the web. I started writing stories based on the files Erik found, one of which was critical of Zelikow. This led to a brief exchange of emails with Zelikow, although he did not give me much new information and kept his cards close to his chest (it was mostly about the air defense on 9/11, not what Disconnecting is about).

My opinion of government officials in general is that they are intelligent, nice and incredibly straight people. They often have a hard time thinking that their colleagues, also intelligent, nice and seemingly straight people, would ever do anything intentionally wrong. This attitude was prevalent on the commission. For example, it’s crystal clear from Shenon’s book that a whole bunch of people on the commission thought CIA Director George Tenet was, at best, economical with the truth, but there’s not a word of this in the report. In addition, judging by what Shenon wrote, nobody ever stopped to ask themselves just why Tenet was lying, what, specifically, was he trying to hide. Also remember the list of chapter headings that Zelikow drafted in the first few months of the investigation and that Philip Shenon exposed in his book? Zelikow knew what he wanted to write more or less from the beginning and was predisposed to follow that course, not to go where the evidence took him.

If I were Tom Wilshire or Richard Blee I would have slept soundly in my bed at night knowing that Barbara Grewe (the DoJ IG and commission investigator responsible for the CIA/FBI issues) and Philip Zelikow were investigating me. Better, more thorough and more skeptical investigators would have got further. Here’s one example of how it should have been done differently: Tenet lied to the commission under oath about not briefing President Bush in mid-August 2001. He then sent out a press release saying he had momentarily forgot about it. OK, so call him back, put him under oath again and have him answer the question.


There are some who claim to be advocates for 9/11 Justice that have a problem with your book because it focuses on the hijackers. Because according to some, there either were no hijackers, or they were “patsies” and the planes were remote controlled. What do you have to say to these individuals?


Disconnecting is a narrowly focused book. It is about the intelligence failures before 9/11. It is pretty clear to me that Almihdhar and Alhazmi were real people and there is evidence they were on the planes (although not all evidence the government says it has is public and you might want to put a question mark over one or two things that are out there). There are lots of people who met them in the States and spoke about it afterwards; there is also a fair amount of documentation about them that was released at the time of the Moussaoui trial. It is also clear they were AQ operatives. Almihdhar lived at AQ’s operations hub—how much more connected could you get?

I’m not a pilot and I can’t really add any expertise to the question of whether the alleged pilots would have been able to fly the planes the way they did with only the training the FBI says they had. However, I don’t think much of the FBI’s investigation, so there is always the possibility that they had training the Bureau did not uncover, or even did uncover, but did not make public. In this context recall that the anthrax scare started a short time after 9/11 and that a lot of agents were diverted away from investigating the attacks to what became the Bureau’s attempt to fit up Steven Hatfill.

Finally, I would say that we don’t really know the half of it. Let’s keep an open mind on what really happened.


Do you think there will ever be real accountability and justice for what happened that day? What would that look like to you?

To answer the second part of the question first: We would have to know exactly what happened, which means making the relevant documents public (not just some investigators writing a report based on evidence that is then withheld) and having witnesses testify publicly and under oath for a credible investigation (meaning: non-partisan, international). Once we know what happened we could then proceed to impose sanctions on people who had performed poorly or engaged in intentional wrongdoing.

Do I ever think this will happen? No. On the brighter side, I do think the media (at least the international media) has become a lot more adversarial and skeptical since 9/11. Compare the response to the 9/11 Commission report (fawning admiration) to the response to the FBI’s claims about Bruce Ivins (downright skepticism in some cases). I think this was more powered by the fallout from the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find WMDs there than anything to do with alternative accounts of 9/11, but it certainly is positive. If 9/11 happened again, I think the response to it in terms of public skepticism of the government’s account would be different.

The post Questions and Answers with Kevin Fenton appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

On June 13, 2011, reporter Jason Leopold, along with Jeffrey Kaye, broke a story about 9/11 that was released on truthout.org. The story appears “to cast further doubt on the official narrative and suggests high-level military and intelligence officials withheld key evidence from Congressional lawmakers probing the attacks.”

According to the report, “DoD officials held discussions about DO5’s intelligence activities between the summer of 2000 and June 2001 revolving around al-Qaeda’s interest in striking the Pentagon, the World Trade Center (WTC), and other targets. In other words, the Bush administration was fully aware the terrorist organization had set its sights on those structures prior to 9/11 and, apparently, government officials failed to act on those warnings.”

If true, this would further show that the multitude of statements made by Bush Administration officials and others after the attacks about not having “any inkling” about what was to come, was a lie. It would further show that the idea of a “failure of imagination” was also a lie (please also watch this).

How did the “9/11 Truth Movement” respond to this report? Unfortunately, truthout has removed the comments from the article. If you had the chance to read them, you would have seen people criticize the report as “Disinfo to sustain the bogus cover story.” You would have seen multiple statements about how this story doesn’t go far enough. That it doesn’t cover this theory or that theory. You would have even seen accusations against Jason Leopold. On other sites, people said this was “SLICK PROPAGANDA from Jason Leopold at Truncated TRUTHOUT.”

On truthout, I left a comment that said, “Thanks Jason for this article. This will help out your readers,” and I linked to my “Official 9/11 Justice Start-Up Kit.” Someone that is supposedly a member of the “9/11 Truth Movement” responded by saying, “nope, that’s just more racist limited hangout BS.”

Basically, it was a mess.

Over the years, I have spoken to many journalists that have written about discrepancies in the 9/11 narrative. I would show them this story, and that story, and hope that they would still have an interest in reporting on 9/11. The response I often got went like this: “Jon, I would, but every time I write about 9/11, I get bombarded by so-called members of the “9/11 Truth Movement” accusing me of this or that because I didn’t cover this or that. It’s become a circus now, and nobody wants to touch it.”

One thing people need to understand is that the media has not done its job with regards to 9/11. For the most part, it has attacked anyone that has questions about that day, and also not given many stories the attention that they deserve. This, in turn, has been very frustrating to many. I, myself, have gone “toe to toe” with journalists over the years, so I am not completely without fault. However, I have since learned from my mistakes, and no longer approach journalists with anger.

As I wrote in my facts piece, everyone has theories. Everyone has theories because those who should be able to answer our questions about that day, refuse to do so. It is human nature to theorize about what happened that day. However, and this is something I came to terms with long ago… We don’t know the truth about what happened that day. We don’t know who was ultimately responsible for what happened that day. This is a hard truth I’ve come to accept. I think because I’ve accepted this hard truth, I have become a better advocate for 9/11 Justice.

Many people in the “9/11 Truth Movement” think they know what happened that day and who was responsible. They don’t. I have read more than most on the subject, and I can honestly say that I don’t know. 9/11 was a crime, and as with every crime, there are suspects for that crime. If you look at ALL of the available information, you will see that elements within our Government and others have MORE THAN EARNED the title of suspect for the crime of 9/11. Along with people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Osama Bin laden. However, without having had a real investigation, we don’t know the full truth.

Veterans of this cause have tried to give advice before on how best to reach people. I have written countless “pointers” over the years to try and help people. It seems as though these attempts at giving advice have fallen on deaf ears.

This kind of behavior is unacceptable. It doesn’t help, and instead, pushes people away. They don’t want to participate, and I can honestly understand why. We are a movement that is desperately trying to get reporters to report on what some of us are saying, and the very people that may be able to help us are being pushed away. How sad is that?

Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye wrote a story that exposed a lie. If we ignore the easy lies, which incidentally help to give credibility to the idea that we were lied to about that day and need real justice and accountability, then we are doomed to fail as a cause.

The 2,973 people that were brutally murdered that day, their family members, and the people of the world deserve better.

The post We're In a Lot of Trouble appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.